Priscilla Paetsch

Her parents were Harry McClure Johnson (1886–1932), a prominent Chicago attorney, and Helena Modjeska Chase (1900–1986), an artist.

She is the youngest sister of Mansi McClure Johnson (1924–2013), Harry McClure Johnson (1925–2007), Elizabeth McIlvaine Johnson (1926–2017), and Sarah Jane McClure Johnson (1929–2013).

Priscilla McClure Paetsch (née Johnson; November 18, 1931 – July 19, 2017) was an American violinist, composer, artist, sculptor, horse trainer, and co-founder of the Paetsch Family Chamber Music Ensemble in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

She was the wife of cellist Günther Johannes Paetsch and the mother to their seven children.

Priscilla McClure Johnson was born in Evanston, Illinois, United States, on 18 November 1931.

She was the fifth child of Harry Johnson, who died on 29 March 1932 from a sudden attack of influenza, which developed into pneumonia, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he was visiting his mother.

He died when she was only four months old.

Although she was reared all over the country, she considers Steamboat Springs, Colorado, the closest thing to a hometown because she spent her summers there on her mother's horse ranch, the Pine Springs Ranch.

In 1946, at the age of 15, she wrote and illustrated with beautiful drawings of horses the children's book How the Eggplant Came to Be, which was written at her mother's Pine Springs Ranch in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and published by Adventure Trails Publications.

From 1946 until 1950, Priscilla McClure Johnson was educated at The Putney School in Vermont, which had an excellent Music Department, majoring in violin, chamber music, and orchestral playing.

She continued her education at Bennington College in Vermont from 1950 to 1952 majoring in violin performance.

She also studied at the Aspen Institute of Music in Colorado from 1954 to 1955 and at the Detmold Musikhochschule in Germany in 1957.

She studied with Madame Eckstein, Frederic Balazs (1st violinist of the Maverick String Quartet of Woodstock, NY; conductor of the Tucson Sym. Orch), Fritz Rikko (Faculty of Putney School and Juilliard; cond. violinist, violist), Gideon Grau (Putney faculty), Orreo Pernel (Bennington Faculty; Primier Prix in Paris Conservatoire), Szymon Goldberg (Solo violinist in Europe and America, faculty of Aspen Institute of Music, who she later sent her daughter, Michaela to study with at Yale University and Curtis Institute of Music), Claus Adam (cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet, who taught chamber music), George Finkle (cellist at the Maverick Theater in Woodstock, NY who taught cello and chamber music at Hickory Ridge School and Putney School and Bennington College), Tibor Varga, and David Oistrakh.

From 1954 to 1955 she was professor of violin, viola and chamber music at the University of Wyoming.

From 1955 to 1956 she instructed violin, viola and chamber music at Colorado College (Colorado Springs, Colorado).

At the University of Wyoming, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree with major in violin, and in 1956 a Master of Arts degree with major in music composition, with highest donors.

She wrote her thesis about "An Analysis of Strawinsky's Symphony in Three Movements" on 24 April 1956 and her thesis about "Some Aspects of Bach's Technique in the Solo Violin Sonatas and Suites" on 1 May 1956.

She was Music Director of World Tour as a violinist and composer from 1956 to 1957 through the Putney Graduate School of Teacher Education.

In the winter of 1956 Priscilla's mother, who had put all of her five children through college, decided to do something for herself: take a tour of Europe.

Priscilla, an expert horse trainer, worked all summer to get enough money to help her mother to go.

Priscilla drove her mother from Colorado Springs to Vermont, where graduate students from the Putney Graduate School of Teacher Education were getting ready for the tour.

She was invited to go with them with scholarship on a ship to Europe.

She was dressed in her cowboy shirt and cowboy hat and Levi's and leather tasseled jacket and boots.

She had her fiddle and guitar and some of her scores ... and ... one skirt, in case she was invited to dinner or something.

That is how she headed out for Europe.

She just had her slicker and bedroll.

Through Gibraltar and Spain and Italy it was found out that she was the only one able to drive the truck at their disposal that had a 27-foot covered bed and a complicated gearing system.

Their guide unfortunately abandoned everyone on the tour during Christmas with all their money – they eventually found him enjoying the nudist beaches in Palermo, Italy and got what money was left, back form him.

She now had $500 and time on her hands she headed for Garmisch-Partenkirchen to visit a friend and the village of Absam where Jacob Stainer had lived and had built his superb violins some 300 years before.

During this time she learned how to speak a number of languages, including Spanish and Italian, and almost fluent in German.

On February 21, 1957, the 26-year-old American violinist Priscilla McClure Johnson found the fairy-tale village of Tübingen, Germany, with cobblestone streets, half-timbered houses, huge weeping willow branches overhanging the Neckar river, a beautifully restored medieval center and an old castle that dominates the hillside.

As she walked the streets she heard a trumpet practicing as if there was a concert that night.

She knocked on the door and asked someone nearby (a young man named Dietrich) if there was a concert that evening.

She was told that there was and he happened to have an extra ticket to it and offered it to her.

After she had checked into the youth hostel and tidied up the best she could she met Dietrich and went to where the concert was to take place and proceeded to hang up her coat in the green room.

She noticed an old Klotz violin lying on a piano.

She admired it, the owner said to try it so she looked for a quiet corner.

She saw a man playing a cello facing the corner playing one part of a two-part piece.

So she went behind and played the other part and they played to the end.

When they finished he looked around and Priscilla saw for the first time the face of the young handsome 28-year-old Günther Johannes Paetsch, the man from Germany who was to become her husband.